US citizens flocking to the one tool that can guarantee their privacy

And that tool is the humble VPN

Shares

A new piece of research has found that almost all Americans are unhappy with the recent ditching of the FCC’s privacy rules that prevent ISPs from sharing users’ browsing data with third-parties – and the majority are happy to pay for a VPN in order to keep said data private.

The survey found that no less than 92% of US citizens disagreed with the repeal of the regulations which President Trump signed off last week, and believed that ISPs should not be allowed to monitor their online activity or sell the resulting data without consent.

Comparitech.com conducted the study which gathered online responses from some 1,200 US residents last week.

Other findings included the fact that six out of ten respondents said they’d change their browsing habits in some way due to the new legislation, and 80% said that if their particular congress representative or senator had voted for the bill to repeal the rules, they’d be ‘dissuaded’ from voting for that politician in the future.

Half of respondents said that they would pay extra for their ISP to keep their browsing data private, and as we already mentioned, the majority of those surveyed – 60% – said they were happy to pay for a VPN subscription to maintain their privacy.

There has certainly been far more interest in VPNs since last month, as we’ve seen a clearly inflated amount of Google searches for the term ‘VPN’ since before the FCC’s rules were actually cast aside. The above statistics underline this observation.

VPN vitals

Of course, if you are going the VPN route, you need to pick a quality provider you trust, as even if the encrypted connection hides your browsing history from the ISP, it won’t be hidden from the VPN outfit itself.

And as Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate at Comparitech.com, further observed: “While using a VPN is a simple solution to maintain privacy, in the wake of the broadband privacy repeal, we've seen reports of VPN-related scams capitalising on the new law. So users must choose a VPN with care.

“Many VPNs found on app stores and Google can actually worsen privacy by mining data, injecting advertisements into web browsers, or even deploying malware.”

Fortunately, we’ve got you covered here at TechRadar with a bunch of recommendations on the best VPNs to use.